


And the Stars Had Them Reunited

by Voidmancer



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It, M/M, Macen Barro Is Alive, Turians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 08:23:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10567404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidmancer/pseuds/Voidmancer
Summary: Macen Barro pulls through impossible injuries and circumstances and reunites with his lover Avitus Rix.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Because the gays don't deserve the "Bury Your Gays" trope, especially not in this game that has such piss-poor M/M representation. Written to be as canon-compliant as possible, because it is canon, dammit.

The cold burned through his lungs like fire, making breathing under the snowy conditions difficult, but Macen plodded on through the white expanse with a sense of exhausted fervor. The winds numbed him, his senses ebbed and surged like the tides, but if he stopped now either the weather would kill him, or the aliens that might still be after him if he did not find shelter.

The emptiness stretched out in front of him, and with no other thoughts to occupy his mind, he thought of the first moment of consciousness since he thought he had been done for. Macen had wondered why the afterlife had him surrounded by oppressive, green metal walls, only to realize he had, somehow, not died.

Impossible, yet it came to be, and in the days that followed, sliced and prodded by scalpels, blood drained from him to be put on their machines.

He had not been alone, there were other aliens there, but he, the only turian. A curiosity for them to study, curious enough that they somehow dragged his body from one planet to another. 

The SAM implant in his head had been deactivated, an effect from transferring his protocols and nearly dying afterwards. With his omni-tool also gone, he could not understand a thing they were saying.

He did understand though, the circumstances of an escape. As the strange aliens released him from his cell to transport him to another facility, he mustered up enough strength and quick wits to escape. Get a weapon, dodge, kill them all faster than they can kill you. Biotics only when necessary to conserve energy.

Several shots to the heads, quick, not neatly calculated but enough. He cut the other aliens loose—can't leave the others behind to a fate he was escaping—before bolting on his own, snatching every weapon he could possibly carry as he ran. 

They didn't come shooting at least, as if they wanted the other aliens alive. But him, he was lower on their priority list.

Spirits, but that had been close. Shotgun shells on one side of his face blasting most of his faceplate on that region off, a deep gash on the other, topped off by one busted arm. And that was just the injuries from the encounter. Wounds, like burns, covered most of his left side where his suit got shredded. The aliens had gotten rid of his suit when they sliced him up, but the replacements he had been provided could almost withstand the cold. 

He fell to his knees on the snow, and all at once the fatigue set in. He looked up at the sky, the beautiful lights and the clear stars above a soothing sight against the endless white. He couldn't move a muscle, his limbs seizing from overuse, but the small welcome comfort of the sight above distracted them. To think that among those stars, Avi was alive and that one day, surely, they would see each other again.

He got on his feet again, taking in a deep breath despite how it raked through his lungs. A few more steps forward, and then a few more, wherever his feet took him, the thought that wherever it was would take him one step closer to Avi kept him going.

-

A low thrum of anxiety that never went away plagued Avitus' days and nights. Playing—no—being the pathfinder hadn't been a job he had been gunning for. An ex-SPECTRE, with his list of skills better at subterfuge and infiltration, did not fit the needs of leadership. He didn't want the job, but Ryder had been right, refusing it wouldn't make the fact that Macen had died untrue.

Macen. It wasn't supposed to be this way. They came here to Andromeda for a new life together, leaving behind everything for a new start. 

Go on for the both of them, Macen's last words rattled through him, a little bell chiming in a big empty space. Of course, he had to, but it didn't make it any easier. Being alone had never been part of this deal.

He sat alone in the Pathfinder's quarters which still didn't feel officially quite his, skimming through emails.

One in particular stood out.

>To: Avitus Rix, Turian Pathfinder  
>From: Ryder, Human Pathfinder

>Heard you were gathering up your people. I remember some turians were passing through Techiix, a settlement in Voeld, when I was there. Could be smugglers, but could also be some of your missing people. Might want to take a look.

Voeld. He thought it had been bad in Havarl, but the cold and the kett would down people faster than the threat of wildlife and raiders. 

Avitus rose from his seat, and looked across the expansive windows to the millions of bright stars in the distance. 

To Voeld it was. 

-

How much time had passed since his he had been taken to this planet, since he had escaped, Macen hadn't a clue, but what he did know was that he was in a place called Voeld, among a people called angara. He had managed to stumble through to a daar called Techiix. 

Stumble had been the right word. He had seen it from a distance, but had been far long into exhaustion to take another step. The angara found him. Some of the angara he had freed must have made it, as they looked beside themselves when they saw him. There were also other turians, kind enough to spare him the dextro-amino rations, but went on their way for business. It was clear things really hadn't turned out the way the Initiative thought it would.

At least the angara had been able to figure out his anatomy enough to help him with his face and the rest of him. The burns from what they called the scourge had been attended to by his captors, the kett, in some manner, but they healed wrong and his skin there had become a mangled mess, not that he minded. His arm had been dislocated, also fractured, coupled with dehydration and malnutrition, he was not in any state to go around anywhere just yet. 

On a request, they had sent a message to the Nexus outpost, but one lone turian against the potential dangers of a kett ambush and no doubt several bureaucratic fences had left him in the care of the angara, who at least seemed hospitable enough after his deeds. 

Macen lay still on his cot, in a small room that had been provided to him, absently fingering his omni-tool as his thoughts wandered to Avi, as they always did now that he had survived immediate dangers. 

"Be safe," he had bidden Avi, asleep and safe, encased in his pod when he ejected him and the others, spacing himself in the process. 

He closed his eyes, trying to remember his face, the feel of their hands clasped together.

He must have fallen asleep and dreamed, because when he opened his eyes it was Avi's face he saw, kneeling by his cot, his face a mix of surprise and disbelief. 

"Macen," Avi said, his voice catching as he took in shuddering breath. "Macen, it's you."

"Avi," Macen murmured through the haze of sleep, sitting up and wrapping his good arm around him and pulling him close, the smell and feel of him engulfing his senses so vivid that it couldn't just be a fever dream. "Oh, Avi."

Avi's hands, free from his gauntlets, cupped his face, his features contorting in concern as he touched the smashed faceplate on one side and the gashed one on the other. "Macen, what happened? These wounds..."

"You'll be the more handsome out of the two of us now," Macen chuckled. 

Avi pressed their foreheads together, tears falling from his eyes as he squeezed Macen's hand. "You'll always be a sight for sore eyes to me."

Macen laughed as Avi pressed in for a kiss, long and full of love and the relief of finding it after it had most certainly been lost. 

"I didn't know what I would do without you," Avi whispered, looking into Macen's eyes. 

"I've survived against all the odds to be together again with you," Macen said, smiling, his heart bursting with happiness as he pulled Avi down for another kiss. 

-

They lay in an entangled mess at the Pathfinder's quarters of the ship, the light of the stars beyond the windows streaming and providing the only source of light in the room. 

The only one they needed, as despite Macen's injuries and the doctor's orders, clothes had flown off of their bodies the moment they could finally be alone. Hands sought to map each other's skin in fervent caresses, eager to rediscover the paths to pleasure six-hundred years of sleep and months of separation had blurred the memories of. Kisses traced those paths and marked those planes. And when neither of them could resist, found themselves joined as one to each other, and repeated these motions again and again, as it always was meant to be, until they collapsed in each other's arms, spent but also sated. 

"I almost didn't want to take up being Pathfinder," Avi murmured sleepily as he thumbed Macen's ruined cheek. "I didn't want to believe you were gone."

Macen pulled Avi into a tighter embrace, as tight as his good arm could let him. "I was gone for sure. The scourge hit me badly, and all I could think of was you, how to do my best to make sure you could make it." 

"And the kett found you."

"Somehow. I think they saw me through that, found it interesting. They must have wanted to do experiments on me alive, because they revived me and started taking sections of my skin and treating the burns with different kinds of treatment. A lot happened and I couldn't even remember most of it," Macen said, awake, suddenly, as he recounted those memories. They had him drugged through those experiments, though he could recall the pain, but not once did he wish it would end. Pain meant he was alive, that he could still yet find his way back here in his lover's arms.

Avi closed his eyes, winding his arms around Macen, saying nothing more. 

Macen smiled, smoothing back the crests on Avi's head. Cradled there amongst the bright, and beautiful stars, they made it, and never again would they be separated.


End file.
